Found after one year Philae, or the lander landed on the comet’s surface last November 2, 2014, and that some time gave no more signs of life; the lander, in fact it was finished in the shelter of a rock, most likely had no more energy and his destiny was to “die” very far from the place where it was created, or the Terra.Invece, after some time, the lander has come to life thanks to the equipment on board the probe Rosetta , who finally managed to locate the lander hidden and wedged into a crack on the surface of the comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
the latest communications from the lander exactly dated back to last July 2015, and finally to less than one month after the conclusion of the European space Agency’s mission, the high resolution camera of Rosetta probe Osiris, seems to have managed to capture the image of Philae. The probe sent last Friday of the images quite clear, taken by the narrow-angle cameras Osiris, when Rosetta was among others at a distance of 2.7 Km from the surface ; these images showed the main body of the lander and two of its three legs.
“With even just a little month of mission in front of us, we are delighted to finally be able to have an image of Philae, and to see him in a surprising level of detail, “ says Cecilia Tubiana of the mission teams, the first person who saw the
the last remark direct Philae went up again really November of two years ago when the lander was released from the Rosetta spacecraft – which had transported millions of kilometers – to reach the surface 67P; it seems that the landing was not optimal and it is impossible to photograph right away the lander had led to analyze different parameters sent to the probe and the probe to Earth to reconstruct the trajectory of Philae as well as its exact landing point was until a few days ago sconosciuto.Non seem to be, however, hopes to revive the lander, because after a long time it seems that the instruments being affected.
“just one month after the end of the mission, we are really happy to be finally able to resume Philae, and with such a striking detail, “said Cecilia Tubiana, the OSIRIS team, the first person to see the incoming images from Rosetta just the other day.
” After months of work with increasingly insistent clues that pointed to this object candidate to be the lander, I’m really excited that we finally have this Philae, set in Abydos “said Laurence O’Rourke, the all research efforts coordinator lander in recent months, together with the OSIRIS and SONC / CNES team.
Philae was last seen as she landed on Agilkia, where it bounced and flew for two hours before ending in a area called Abydos, the smaller lobe of the comet.
, the main battery After three days he was exhausted and the lander went into hibernation, to wake up again and briefly communicate with Rosetta in June and July 2015, the exact location of Philae was not known when the comet was near the point closest to the Sun in its orbit and was therefore available more solar energy to recharge the battery.
However, to date,. With soundings radio, it was possible to narrow down the lander position within an area of a few tens of meters, but the low resolution of the images taken by a considerable distance had led to the identification of numerous false candidates.
a significant number of these had been discarded from the analysis conducted earlier and the different control techniques had been shown to converge again towards a particular target that was found then just be the Philae lander, clearly visible in the high-resolution images captured from a distance close from the comet’s surface.
in the image you can distinguish a number of features and instruments of the small lander. Recall that the image resolution is 5 cm per pixel! Click the image to enlarge. Credits: ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS / UPD / LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA
At the altitude of 2.7 km, the resolution of the OSIRIS room has a resolution 5 cm / px, sufficient to distinguish the structural characteristics of Philae, whose main body measuring about 1 meter, as seen from the adjacent figures.
“This amazing discovery comes at the very end of a long and exhausting research, “said Patrick Martin, Rosetta Mission Manager. “Now we began to think that Philae would remain dispersed forever. It’s amazing how we managed to track him down at the very last. “
” This good news gives us then how to contextualize the detections made by Philae on the comet, adding information that was missing without knowing the exact location of landers and “ground” on which he had posed “stressed Matt Taylor, Rosetta Project Scientist of the mission.
” Now that the search for the lander is over, we feel really ready for the landing of Rosetta and we look forward to capturing images even closer the landing probe “added Holger Sierks site, principal investigator of the OSIRIS room.
the discovery comes less than a month from the drop-down rosette on the surface. On 30 September, in fact, the orbiter will be sent for a mission of no return on the surface of the comet, which will study it and observe closely even the open wells of Ma’at region, which will hopefully reveal some of the secrets of the inner structure of the body the comet.
the ESA promises to release as soon as more information and images on the discovery of the lander Philae.
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